AT&T Rides iPhone's Coattails

The U.S. cellular service provider market remains a two-horse race between AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) – with the former leading in terms of future demand and the latter in terms of customer satisfaction and fewest dropped calls.

These and other key findings arose from a March ChangeWave survey of 4,292 consumers.

Future Share

When asked how likely they were to change service providers in the next 6 months, 13% of consumers said they were very or somewhat likely to switch.

Among that group, only 9% of current AT&T customers said they're likely to switch compared to 11% of Verizon customers – giving AT&T a slight edge in customer loyalty. But where do those consumers who are switching say they’re headed?

A full third (33%) say they’ll go with AT&T – a huge 6-pt jump from December to the highest level since we began asking this question back in 2005. Verizon (24%; up 2-pts), while still competitive, continues to lag behind.



Note that dating back to the period just before the original Apple (AAPL) iPhone rollout, AT&T has managed to stay in first place in terms of future demand.

A coincidence? Not likely.

But the big question going forward is how long can AT&T keep its exclusivity agreement with Apple and ride the iPhone’s coattails? While the current deal is set to expire next year, AT&T is in talks with Apple to extend it until 2011.

Rumors are that Apple is also in talks with Verizon about launching an iPhone-type line that will run on the Verizon network. If the rumors prove true, AT&T has plenty to worry about.

1  |  2

next >>

First, when it comes to customer satisfaction, Verizon is the hands down winner, as the following chart clearly points out.



A second related area that Verizon maintains an edge is in the frequency its customer’s experience "dropped calls." Once again, Verizon is the clear winner, with its customers reporting an average of just 1.8% of their calls dropped during the past 90 days – well ahead of all of its competitors including AT&T.



For a multitude of reasons, the survey results show AT&T would be best served if it can remain the exclusive iPhone distributor for North America, but Verizon may have other ideas.

However, there’s one clear winner here no matter which way the Apple falls from the tree – it’s the Apple.

Click here to check out more of the latest ChangeWave research findings.

---

The ChangeWave Alliance Research Network is a group of 20,000 highly qualified business, technology and medical professionals -- as well as early adopter consumers -- who work in leading companies of select industries. ChangeWave surveys its network members weekly on a range of business and consumer topics, and converts the information into a series of proprietary quantitative and qualitative reports.

<< previous

1  |   2